From idea to production, the development of a new drug can take up to 10 years and cost about $800 million. But many risks abound in the development process that can cause complete failure. The process usually starts with the idea that an existing chemical substance has therapeutic value or that the structure of an existing drug can be modified for new clinical uses. Out of 10,000 chemicals tested in a laboratory, only one may eventually become a drug. Besides the expense necessary to produce them, drugs are heavily regulated by the bureaucracy of government agencies. In the United States, the FDA not only approves new drugs, but also determines how drugs are produced and sold by continually monitoring the development and use of all drugs sold. This is the backdrop against which a pharmaceutical company (“pharma 102”) markets its precious few developed drugs 104. See FIG. 1.
Traditionally, a sales representative 106 of the pharma 102 visits one or more prescribers 110, leaves behind some drug samples of the drugs 104, and waits in trust that the prescribers 110 will prescribe these drug samples to their patients. When a sales representative 106 visits a prescriber, such as one of the prescribers 110, the sales representative 106 is performing two actions together called a drug detail. First, the sales representative 106 educates the prescriber about the efficacy of the drug samples for various disease states and differentiates them from any competitive drugs in the marketplace. Second, the sales representative 106 leaves drug samples behind with the prescriber so that he can dispense these drug samples to his patients.
A triangle 108 hierarchically organizes all prescribers into deciles, which are numbers that divide a frequency distribution (the regularity of which a prescriber prescribes drugs) into 10 classes such that each contains the same number of prescribers. The upper 1-3 deciles describe one or more prescribers 110. The remaining 4-10 deciles describe one or more prescribers 112. Prescribers at deciles 1-3 comprise 25 percent of all prescribers and generate 50 percent of all prescriptions. The remaining 75 percent of prescribers are at deciles 4-10 and prescribe the remaining 50 percent of all other prescriptions. Because individual prescribers at deciles 4-10 do not generate as much income for the pharma 102 compared to those in the top three deciles, the sales representative 106 typically does not visit these prescribers, but instead, focuses her efforts on prescribers 110 at deciles 1-3.
The reason for this is mainly economic. For each sales representative 106, the pharma 102 incurs numerous expenses including purchasing and maintaining an automobile for the sales representative 106 to travel to the prescribers, and paying a salary, benefits, and so on. Also a growing number of billions of dollars are spent each year on everything necessary to support the distribution of drug samples, such as packaging and delivery. When this cost is multiplied by the cost of employing multiple sales representatives, the pharma 102 cannot afford to visit all prescribers to solicit patronage of its drugs.
But there are still other reasons beyond the economic ones that prevent the sales representative 106 from visiting all prescribers. One or more prescribers 112 may be located in remote areas making it difficult for the sales representative 106 to reach them. Certain prescribers 112 do not wish to see a sales representative 106 because they are too busy with their practice or they belong to an organization, such as a hospital, that forbids sales representatives from soliciting prescribers on its premises. Another reason why most prescribers 112 are not visited by the sales representative 106 has to do with absences by the sales representative 106 because of parental leaves, military duties, firings, layoffs, or unexpectedly resignations, and so on.
While it is cost prohibitive for the pharma 102 to send sales representatives to visit all prescribers, prescribers who know about the drug samples and want access to drug samples have problems too. If the prescriber were to be interested in designing a therapy from five different brands of drugs, he might have to track down five different sales representatives to get the drug samples. The prescriber's preferences are completely ignored. The biggest dissatisfaction of all among prescribers, however, is the lack or inconsistent supply of physical samples in their hands. These prescribers may not have easy access to the sales representative 106. And even if access were possible, the sales representative 106 may not have a ready supply of physical samples for these prescribers to use. The literature has shown that if a prescriber is dissatisfied with a drug brand due to lack of physical samples, the prescriber will not prescribe that particular drug brand to patients.
When the sales representative 106 leaves drug samples with the prescriber, the prescriber signs an acknowledgment indicating that these drug samples are now in his possession. Beyond that, however, there is no data that tracks whether drug samples actually get prescribed to patients of the prescriber. No additional information is possible beyond the point at which drug samples are given to the prescriber. So even though the pharma 102 has spent a great deal of money on drug samples, it has no means of knowing whether the physical samples were actually prescribed to patients or tossed uselessly into a garbage can. Without a way to track these drug samples, the pharma 102 cannot improve its drug sample distribution. Moreover, without tracking, expired drug samples may be prescribed to patients, diminishing their efficacy. This may add to wrongful impressions by patients regarding the drug's effectiveness and eventually will lead to a lack of acceptance of the drug in the marketplace.
In sum, not only is it expensive and laborious to develop new drugs, but the traditional drug sample distribution process does not allow the pharma 102 to assess the effectiveness of its drug sample fulfillment program further increasing financial risk to the pharma 102. Not all prescribers can be reached by the sales representative 106, hence limiting the distribution of drug samples to patients who may benefit from them. On the other hand, prescribers who do wish to have an opportunity to try the drug samples cannot obtain a consistent supply. Thus, there is a need for an architecture for enhancing drug sample fulfillment distribution while avoiding or reducing the foregoing and other problems.